USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Antrim > History of the town of Antrim, New Hampshire, from its earliest settlement to June 27, 1877, with a brief genealogical record of all the Antrim families > Part 16
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One hundred years ago! The early history of this town is quite as familiar to you as to me, and is soon to be recounted in
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better words than I can command. Riley's first opening in 1744, the Indian war driving him away for years, and then lris first permanent settlement, 1761; Dea. Aiken's opening at South Antrim, Aug. 12, 1767, his nearest neighbor five miles away ; his solitary home in the forest for four years till William Smith came in 1771; the toil and privations, carrying his grist on his back six miles through the woods to find the mill broken, then returning and rowing another one twelve miles up the river, only to lose it in the water after all; the weeks without taste of bread ; the children without food relieved by the chance shot of a single pigeon on Sunday morning, while the father had gone sixteen miles to New Boston for corn, - all these and scores of incidents more have been so wonderfully condensed in Whiton's history of the town, that you will be more interested in getting them there than here. How often, when a boy, have I lain dreamily on the hill over there and looked down upon this most magnificent scenery, - looked, to see the whole covered with its original forest, and watched and listened to the varying scenes: the sharp stroke of Dea. Aiken's ax, and the crash of the trees, one after another, as they fell before his vigorous blows ; the smoke of his first clearing going up into the sky ; the royal welcome, and supper, and cheer, when Smith came to break his four years' loneliness ; the creak of John Bell's first cart, bringing Capt. Duncan's goods through the Contoocook, 1773 ; the gathering from all the towns about to the first sermon in town, in Dea. Aiken's new frame barn, 1775 ; the great event of two saw-mills in town, 1776, one at North Branch, the other at South Village ; the hardly less event of the " Great Bridge " over the Contoocook below Dea. Aiken's, and the sturdy axmen slowly cutting a bridle-path from it up through the hills to the Branch mill, and thence to the grist-mill at Hillsborough. But why recount ? How little we realize, my friends, in our compar- ative ease and abundance, the tremendous cost of what we pos- sess to those sturdy men who dug and cleft it with bar and ax from the depths of the primeval forest. Yet, I am not sure that I would not leave, to-day, our elegant mansions and sumptuous fare and costly refinements, with their accompanying physical, not to say mental and moral, weakness, for the glorious manhood of those, who, barefooted and in their shirt-sleeves, ate baked- beans and hominy from pine tables in cabins with no carpet but the hardened earth.
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" Lexington battle, April 19, electrified the country. The spring was early and the grass-fields green. Men either flew with speed, or fired guns, to give the alarm to their neighbors. The scattered inhabitants of Society Land promptly assembled at Dea. Aiken's, elected Isaac Butterfield of Greenfield their captain, and marched forthwith toward Boston to defend the liberties of their country, - a band of as brave hearts and as true patriotism as could be found in America. Next morning the women came together with the provision they had prepared dur- ing the night ; and, after a fervent prayer by William Smith, his female auditors being in tears, he set out with a load of pro- visions to overtake the company, John Gordon being the only male adult left in town.". Such is Dr. Whiton's quaintly beauti- ful account of an event which I have never been able to think of without a thrill of pride and admiration. Not an able-bodied man in town but was speeding down to fight the foe at Boston ! They were met. at Tyngsborough by Col. Stark, and sent home to plant their corn, not being immediately needed ; but the spirit was there the same- the spirit of their race : for " the first voice in America," says Bancroft, " for dissolving all connection with Great Britain, came from the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian ; " and another adds that " such a thing as a Scotch-Irish Tory was unheard of ; the race never produced one."
And those weeping women there in the gray morning, kneel- ing beside the load of provisions which their hurried fingers had toiled all night to prepare, while the white-haired veteran lifts his hands for the divine protection on those left alone there, and on their fathers and brothers marching to the war, - it was one of those rare scenes that canvas, song, and story seize upon for immortality. Oh, those Scotch-Irish mothers and grandmothers of ours, - what marvelous women they were ! With their large families ; their spinning and weaving and housekeeping; their great stores of butter and cheese ; their milking, and feeding the pigs, and " doing the chores "; their washing and ironing and mending and making; their " fixing up" the children every morning for school, catechising them for the Sabbath, toiling early and late to send them to college, weeping over them in childhood, praying over them always ; their tireless watching before the sick and the dying ; their humble, devoted walk before their God, - where, in all the past, can we anywhere find their peers ! What wonder, with mothers such as these, that New
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Hampshire has her unchallenged record, not indeed for fruits of the soil, nor wealth of trade, nor silver mountains or golden val- leys, but for men !
The year 1777 was an eventful one. Burgoyne was marching down into New York, sending detachments into Vermont, boast- ing that he could march across New England if his superiors would permit. New Hampshire flew to arms, -our own town furnishing her quota under Lieut. John Duncan, - and led by the Scotch-Irishman Stark, aided by troops from Vermont and Massachusetts, won the brilliant victory of Bennington, one of the most decisive battles of the war. But the most important event of the year to the town was the granting by the general court, March 22, of the town charter just read to us, which we celebrate to-day. The first regular town meeting was held May 1. At . the second meeting, August 20, at eight o'clock, A. M., a report was made fixing the site of the Center, and adopted at once, when the meeting immediately adjourned to felling trees on the site of the meeting-house. Oh for one more such town meet- ing in Antrim ! The meeting-house was not begun till 1785, and was finished in 1791. The first school-house was reared in 1779, and a better took its place in 1786. Thus, true to the instincts of their race, in their labor and poverty their first solicitude was for the meeting-house and the school-house. They knew, those men, what we are too much forgetting, that in religion and edu- cation lies the only security to popular liberty. Remember they did these things under "hard times " such as we have never dreamed of, when a silver dollar could hardly be found, when ten dollars of an inflated currency was the price of a day's labor and seventy of a Sunday's preaching. A corresponding energy and sacrifice on our part, with the wealth and advantages of to- day, would build a railroad through the town, erect a factory on North Branch river, found a high school for our children and endow it for all time to come.
But I must not linger on these themes. Words of ours are very powerless here to-day. Ten generations of the past are speaking to us, - men who have had a hand in overturning dy- nasties and founding states ; a race that has given to our country one-third of her presidents, commanders and generals to our armies, scores of governors to our states, and senators, represent- atives, judges, clergymen, educators, without number ; a race whose blood, it is said, has infused itself into five millions of our
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population, and everywhere only to carry its tremendous energy and resolute success. Are we the sons of sires like these ? The question is not of three centuries ago, nor of two, or one ; not of what they did, but of what we are doing. We look back upon them and say there were giants in those days ; they wrought heroically ; they builded well. To-day these gathered thousands sit in judgment on a century ago; but I cannot keep it out of mind, my friends, that a hundred years from to-day another jury will be assembled where we stand, a jury larger, and I hope wiser and better, than we - what shall their verdict be ? These petty self-seekings, and strifes, and political squabbling, that so much engage. us, - into what meanness and poverty they sink beside the achievements of our ancestors ! The great work for us ' to-day - how the blood of three centuries leaps in our veins when we see such paltry trifles holding us from its high accomplish- ment ! If the money, time, and effort, that have been directed by everybody for the last twenty-two years, since the contest began, to carrying our March elections, had been put into mill-dams, canals, shops, factories, the old town to-day would have been sec- ond to but few in the State. As it is, the pleasant fact meets us that Antrim is one of our few country towns whose population has increased during the past ten or fifteen years. . Very few of our towns in the last five years have made such improvement in the erection and adornment of residences. Let this be the harbin- ger of the future. Turn this Scotch-Irish grit in a new direction. As our fathers were for a long time leaders in reducing the State from the wilderness, let their sons and daughters now be leaders in solving the greatest problem of New Hampshire's future, - of redeeming these old towns from decay.
The old days and the old ways have done their work and are gone. "New times demand new measures and new men ; " the sooner we appreciate the fact the better. The steady drain of our young men and women to other fields must be diminished. It may be life to them but it is death to us ; the wonder is that we have been able to endure it so long. Only three things will remedy the matter, -religion, education, business. Men may sneer as they please, but it is eternal truth, nevertheless, that " righteousness exalteth a nation " and "unless the Lord build the house they labor in vain who build it." It was the strong hold which this truth had on the lives of the forefathers, more than anything and everything else, that gave them their prodig-
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ious power. The general forgetfulness of this, in high places and low, is one of the direst omens of our times. Our people must understand, too, that while the physical life-blood of our cities must still come, as it has, from the country, it is no longer to be merely physical, - stout muscle, and brawn, and brain. Henceforth it must be educated muscle and brain. Our whole country, especially in the larger places, is getting thoroughly alive to this question ; and the town or people which fails to ap- preciate the situation and energetically apply the remedy, must inevitably fall behind. The third thing is everywhere admitted already, that under the changed condition of things no town can stand at all without manufactures. This educated muscle and brain must be set to work at home. The places that have seen this and drawn in around them railroads and shops, are prosper- ing ; those that ignore it are dead.
This grand old town with all her magnificent lake and mnoun- tain scenery, unsurpassed in southern New Hampshire, and with the unbounded hospitality of her people, - bigger hearts I have never yet found in all my wanderings, -instead of being the resort of a few scattered tourists, ought to be made the summer residence of hundreds. These prodigious water-powers, 110w tumbling idly over the rocks, if harnessed to the wheel would build up, in at least three sections of the town, large and flour- ishing villages like those of Peterborough, if not like Milford or Nashua. Then these wide fields where once our fathers plowed, where now only the oxen fatten or bushes grow, feeling the inspir- ing touch of industry, would be repeopled, and agriculture, which after all is the substratum of all our wealth, would come up to the position its importance demands. With increased popula- tion, these churches, whose prosperity is the best measure of real progress, would no longer crowd each other; and education, without which there can be no progress, would be stimulated into the prominence it must hold in every successful community. I say nothing of the refined and elegant homes, the culture, the wealth, that would come of all this; they are beginning to be seen already, that they would come is certain, but has nothing to do with the case. Our business is to wall up these rivers, send the plowshare through these hillsides, put life and power . into school and church.
You say all this is a flighty dream ? Well, here all abroad are the grand possibilities, and here before me the power for their
9
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realization. To sit idly down on the fame or successes of our fathers, is to perish. The twentieth century is upon us. To shake off this tremendous inertness, to turn up our sleeves in our fathers' manhood, and by sheer strength roll these old granite mountains out into line with the progress of the day, - that is the work Antrim has to perform, that is the work New Hamp- shire has to perform. The on-coming years demand it of us ; for that the jury that shall stand here one hundred years from to- day will hold us to the judgment. God grant the verdict, - They did their work, they builded worthy the race from which they sprung !'
CENTENNIAL POEM BY PROF. J. W. BARKER.
Turn back, O Time, thy chariot wheels, And pause in thy mysterious flight; Whate'er the past from me conceals, Now throw around the morning light; A moment pause, - let me forget The present with its hopes and fears, And read the past with earnest thought ; Turn back, O Time, a hundred years !
I'm there amid the solitudes And scenes of nature, undefiled, - The cragged cliff, the trackless woods, The trouted brook and rivers wild; The landscape in its beauty lay As fair as Eden's richest bloom,
When morning's first inspiring ray Touched the untrodden hills of June.
A signal on thy granite hills Is beaming like a golden star; The mystic wealth its light distils Seems calling people from afar. A voice is floating through the vales, And stirreth by the moaning sea, Upon the breath of every gale: It is the voice of prophecy.
'Tis not to waiting mines of gold, Nor fields of plenty, clothed in bloom; Oh not to treasures, new and old, It bids a toiling race to come ; A richer feast than kings can spread, Or e'en the fabled gods prepare, Is waiting now the heavy tread Of freemen, gathering slowly there.
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Behold a thin and scattered band, Yet brave and stout of heart they come, To plant upon their chosen land A freeman's hope, a freeman's home; They build their altars by the streams, And on the mountain's sunlit sod, And dedicate their earnest toil Alone to Freedom and to God.
And Freedom's spirit, hovering o'er, Accepts the gracious offering given; The winds upon the lonely shore Are lifting now their vows to heaven; And God, who sees the feeblest thought That stirs to life the human soul, Looks down upon the freeman's cot, And gives his labor kind control.
THE BUILDING.
One afternoon, from near and far, When June her softest air distilled, They gathered on the neighboring height, A scattered crowd, resolved to build; No marble column, towering high, No stately " corner-stone " is laid, No steeple pointing toward the sky, In gorgeous tinselry arrayed.
The oak, the sturdy forest king, And granite from the solid hills, ยท With gratitude and songs they bring, To plant for butments, and for sills; Firm as the faith on which they stand, They rear the humble house of prayer, And God around the faithful band Extends the covert of his care.
THE WORSHIP.
Six toilsome days, six quiet nights, To earnest work and care are given ; Six days to till the rugged earth, And one, the blessed hope of heaven; For when the peaceful Sabbath came, Amid the scenes of nature grand, The breath of worship seemed to stir The stillness of this favored land.
I see him now - the man of God - As in the olden time I saw,
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Bearing on high the mystic rod Of sovereign grace, or sterner law; He speaks of heaven, a rest for all, With earnest heart and tearful eyes, Within the pulpit, rude and tall, That lifts him to the listening skies.
They worship with the scented groves, The spreading vales and towering hills; Their hymns, the chorus of the song Of singing birds, and singing rills; So near the sky, the azure blue Seems ringing with united song; The saints on earth and saints on high Join in one vast unbroken throng.
THE SCHOOL-HOUSE.
Amid a little clustering group Of fair and smiling hills it stood, In all its rude simplicity, Near to the border of the wood, - That old school-house with windows four, And one above the shattered door.
Near by, the little brooklet sung, In spring and summer time, so sweet, Inviting to its pebbly shore A score of busy truant feet, Which dashed the crystal waters wide,
When e'er they touched the sparkling tide.
And when old winter's icy touch ' Had deftly silvered o'er the stream, And many a stately pile of snow Was heaped upon the school-house green, - How swiftly flew the shining steel, Bound closely to the skater's heel.
The people's college, rude in form, But in its purpose nobly grand, The sport of sunshine and of storm, - The crowning glory of the land. And so, upon Columbia's shore, We'll sing its praise forever more.
The church and school-house, side by side, Fair treasures of this chosen land, They spread their beams of glory wide; As stars above the night they stand'. These are the bulwarks of the free; The chosen forts of liberty.
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PROGRESS. As mountain streams, the years went by; With life, the hill and valley rung, And thickly o'er the rugged land The hamlet and the village sprung. The arts of peace, the busy hum Of labor, driving on apace, Where'er their grateful blessings come, Work wonders for the toiling race.
The hamlets of the living grow In pride and beauty everywhere, Round many a hearth the genial glow Of song and gladness mingle there; But ah ! amid these sunlit scenes, Some clouds are hanging overhead, As burns the light in living homes, So grow the cities of the dead.
HAMLETS OF THE DEAD. Yon silent street I'm treading now, And touching memories throng my breast, When in the June of long ago We laid her * gently down to rest, And left her with the groves and flowers, A tear upon the lovely bed; She vanished from that home of ours, To swell the city of the dead.
And oh! to tread the mournful round In the lone city on the hill, And know that in the voiceless ground Some kindred dust is sleeping still, Is like the border-land of dreams, We visit in the midnight deep, When sailing on the shoreless sea, Beyond the mystic river, Sleep.
They're with us now, - oh, could the screen That thinly veils these mortal eyes Be lifted from the worlds between, What visions would our souls surprise! We'd see the dear, familiar forms, Whose dust is mingling with the clay, - Though o'er the " silent river " gone, They gather round our homes to-day.
For, mid the scenes of hope and toil, Amid the calm or mid the strife, * An only sister.
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These spirit eyes are watching still, Upon the skyward towers of life ; - The voices stilled amid the flood, Whose sullen murmur we can hear, Break the deep silence of the tomb, And breathe soft music in the ear.
The ceaseless current of the years, With noiseless flow, is moving on, While on its glittering sheen appears The trophies of the victories won. A thousand years, a single day - The same upon its heaving breast, The works of ages move away As lightly as a child at rest.
And can it be all else must move Upon the current at its will ? Is the vast army pressing on, - And we alone left standing still ? Nay, moving, hoping, toiling on, - Oh, may we fill the mission well! The story of our earnest work, The coming hundred years must tell. .
PERSONAL
The sun is dropping toward the western hills, A misty halo gathers round its moon, I hear the murmur of the distant rills. And the soft echo of the songs of June.
Far in the east, beneath the frowning skies, A boundless ocean bathes a mystic shore, And winding up the steeps a pathway lies, O'er which my weary feet shall press no more.
And through the gathering shadows, I can see Deep foot-prints marking all the beaten road, Where struggling with life's earnest destiny I sometimes fainted 'neath the heavy load.
Oh! these are not the " prints upon the sand " Smoothed and concealed by time's relentless wave; The chilling frosts of winter they withstand, And greet the vision e'en beyond the grave.
There are thorns which spring by the wayside yet, Where the hands of the toiling pilgrims bleed, And I know the depth of the sad regret,
That my hands have scattered some careless seed.
[ P smart Boxtan
That. Adam Son
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RESPONSE OF HON. CHARLES ADAMS, JR.
But a golden light is streaming through On memory's dim and faded page, And fairy hands seem weaving now A chaplet for the brow of age.
For there bloom upon the virgin soil The flowers of love and kindly deed, Where, through the hours of earnest toil, I scattered wide the precious seed.
And the harvest-fields are rich in gold, The fruitage of the kindly years, For there springs the growth of a hundred-fold, From the seed we sow in love and tears.
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But the sun hath reached its burning noon And droppeth towards the western sky; The anthems and the flowers of June No more allure the ear and eye.
The span is short, - the sunset hills In gold and crimson seem more near ; The murmur of the autumn rills Within the western vales I hear.
The fields are whitening, and the blade Grows heavy with the dropping sun ; A voice seems stirring in the shade, " Brother, thy work is well-nigh done."
Then up to the harvest-fields, at morn! There is work for the feeblest heart or hand; We must work till the weary day is done, And we reach the golden sunset-land.
RESPONSE OF HON. CHARLES ADAMS, JR., OF NORTH BROOKFIELD, MASS.
" Scotch character - still marked by grit and grace."
MR. PRESIDENT, FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF ANTRIM, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, - After listening to the eloquent and in- structive speeches of your president and the accomplished orator of the day, it is with great reluctance that I rise to say a single word. I should prefer to remain a silent listener; but somehow your committee have got the notion that every son of Antrim is a born orator, - which is undoubt- edly true, as a rule, - and, under that impression, they have invited, or, rather, they have required, me to respond to the sentiment just read, touching the "grace and grit" of the Scotch-Irish character. I shall endeavor to comply with the request, conscious, however, that by so doing I shall demonstrate the fallacy of their rule, or at least show one exception to it. I was notified beforehand, by the reverend chairman of
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the committee on literary matters, of the sentiment to which I was expected to respond, and expressed a doubt of my ability to do justice to the subject, or to satisfy the reasonable expectations of a Scotch-de- scended audience, when he cut me short, and, to some extent, relieved my misgivings, by kindly remarking that there was no necessary con- nection between the "sentiments " and the speeches that follow, - the sentiments being, in fact, mere "figure-heads," ornamental, but of no particular use ; or, as I understood it, like the "dummy " forms in a mantua-maker's shop, - used to hang dupes of all kinds upon, for exhi- bition ; or, if my clerical friends will pardon the comparison, like a text of Scripture at the head of a sermon, always good in itself, but not always indicative of the quality, and sometimes not even suggestive of the sub- ject of the sermon that follows it. Mr. President, I prefer this last com- parison, because it applies so closely to the sentiment under considera- tion, and the speech I am making in response to it.
I am reminded, in this connection, of a meeting of the agricultural society to which I belong, where several gentlemen who were called upon to speak made the excuse that they were unacquainted with the subject, when the president announced that speeches would be in order upon any subject, provided no allusion was made to agriculture; and I suppose I shall be pardoned, if, in speaking to the sentiment announced, I shall avoid all allusion to anything that is Scotch.
And now, Mr. President, as I have a few remarks to make on my own account, aside from this sentiment, I wish to lay it upon the table for a few minutes, promising to resume it again, if time permits, unless it is voted that the " further reading of it be dispensed with," - a vote which is frequently resorted to, in parliamentary proceedings, to get rid, for the time being, of some tedious bill or document, - and which would be a very appropriate vote in the present case.
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